Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/67

Rh land connected the provinces of the Roman world; and the life of Hilarion displays the facility with which an indigent hermit of Palestine, might traverse Egypt, embark for Sicily, escape to Epirus, and finally settle in the island of Cyprus. The Latin Christians embraced the religious institutions of Rome. The pilgrims, who visited Jerusalem, eagerly copied in the most distant climes of the earth, the faithful model of monastic life. The disciples of Antony spread themselves beyond the tropic, over the Christian empire of Œthiopia. The monastery of Banchor, in Flintshire, which contained above two thousand brethren, dispersed a numerous colony among the barbarians of Ireland; and Iona, one of the Hebrides which was planted by the Irish monks,